Designers today need to do it all. While honing specialized design skills, they are often required to learn marketing, social media strategy, and more. Today’s professionals need to be able to move fluidly between visual communication, product and service design, entrepreneurship, typography, technology, facilitation, research, and cultural strategy—often on the same day. That’s why programs that are designed to help students integrate these modes of practice are so important. At the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, a new multidisciplinary MFA design program does exactly that.
“Designers today move between media, disciplines, and contexts,” shares Randy Hunt, current SVA MFA Design chair. “Our program prepares them to bring a clear point of view, strong craft, and an understanding of people to the complex opportunities ahead.”
Student work by Julia Hummel. Photography courtesy of the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
Building on SVA’s reputation as a leader in design education, the new MFA design degree is a two-year, multidisciplinary graduate program for designers looking to create meaningful change across industries in products, services, and more. With a powerful tagline, “Design What the World Needs Next,” this degree combines the school’s four graduate-level design programs (Design, Interaction Design, Products of Design, and Design for Social Innovation) into one interconnected degree built for a new era of design.
“Design has always been one of the cornerstones of SVA’s cultural contributions,” Hunt explains. “This next chapter is about preparing designers not only to respond to the world as it changes, but to shape it through rigorous practice, collaboration, critical thinking, experimentation, and meaningful connection to industry and society.”
Photography courtesy of the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
Launching next fall, MFA Design will be based at 136 W 21st Street in the heart of New York City’s bustling Chelsea neighborhood. Led by Randy Hunt, the program features studios, seminars, workshops, as well as critiques, collaborations, and networking opportunities with design professionals—plus access to communal studio spaces, a fabrication and coding lab, and flexible learning spaces. With a curriculum based on the intersection of critical inquiry and practical application, students are asked to research, prototype, develop, and test work that is culturally relevant and resonant.
“SVA’s design programs have always been shaped by working practitioners,” SVA President Christopher Cyphers says. “Our students learn from people who are actively defining the field. The opportunity now is to make those connections even more visible, more integrated, and more powerful across the graduate design experience.”
Photography by ANDREA MIRANDA SALAS & LORENA ESTRELLA (MFA 2020 DSI), courtesy of the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
Grounded in deep industry engagement and SVA’s broader cultural involvement in the city, this multidisciplinary degree underscores the importance of a design education that teaches real-world skills while also setting students up to become creative movers and shakers. Designers don’t just make objects or build buildings; they shape the world we live in.
Submit your application today to join the 2027 cohort here. Recruitment for the class of 2029 MFA Design candidates begins this fall.
